That’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, that truth is no excuse for fiction. I’ve had students who want to fictionalize a real story and then have found themselves floundering because true things are often too unbelievable to work in fiction. Fiction needs to make sense. It needs to be plausible. Reality doesn’t. That’s why the saying, Stranger Than Fiction.

(2) SACRED QUESTER. In “Is This Economist Too Far Ahead of His Time?” in the October 16 Chronicle of Higher Education, David Wescott profiles Robin Hanson about The Age of Em, including where Hanson gets his wild ideas, how Hanson hopes to write sf someday, and how fans accost him with ideas about “transcension and living in blocks of computronium.”

Hanson considers himself something of an exception to that rule and has described his mission as a “sacred quest, to understand everything, and to save the world.” He argues that academics are primarily devoted to signaling their own importance, and not necessarily to the pursuit of intellectual progress. “We lie about why we go to prestigious colleges as students, we lie about why we fund research, we lie about why we do research … we lie about lots of things,” he says. “We are so tempted to bullshit and give the most noble reason for why we do things.”

For academics who do actually care about intellectual progress more than “prestige, promotions, salaries, funding, lots of students, and roaring crowds,” Hanson says, there is a lot of freedom.

For him it’s the freedom to study things like immortality, aliens, and what to do if you suspect you are living in a computer simulation. “There are important silly subjects,” he says. And while most academics shy away from silly, “silly doesn’t equal unimportant.”

There were plenty of laughs at Murray’s expense in evening that took on the tone of a gentle roast. Jimmy Kimmel, Aziz Ansari, Sigourney Weaver and Steve Martin were among those who ribbed Murray for being aloof, unpredictable and difficult to reach — and somehow still lovable.

“I think you and I are about as close as two people can be, considering that one of them is you,” Martin said in a video tribute.

(4) TEPPER OBIT. Shari S. Tepper (1929-2016) died October 22 reports Locus Online. The author of over 40 novels, Tepper received a lifetime achievement award from the World Fantasy Convention just last year.

Also a bit depressing: That Tepper, while well-regarded, is as far as I can tell generally not considered in the top rank of SF/F writers, which is a fact I find completely flummoxing. Her novel Grass has the sort of epic worldbuilding and moral drive that ranks it, in my opinion, with works like Dune and Perdido Street Station and the Earthsea series; the (very) loose sequel to Grass, Raising the Stones, is in many ways even better, and the fact that Stones is currently out of print is a thing I find all sorts of appalling.

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS

Born October 24, 1893 — Film producer-director Merian Cooper (the original “King Kong”).

Here am I, in the esteemed company of such luminaries in my field as Larry Correia and John C Wright, as winners of the Wally Award, an honor I will treasure – because it isn’t every day I find myself lumped with authors that I try to learn from and imitate, and I hear some terribly tragic news.

There’s no doubt that being singled out by none other than Damien Walter of ‘The Grauniad’, a newspaper whose reputation for unbiased journalism is only rivaled by Pravda, legendary for its typos and grammos (hence Grauniad, rather than The Guardian), and with research and factual quality which is mentioned in the same breath as News of the World and Beano (although they cannot seriously compete with Beano in the opinion of most people of an IQ above ‘sheep, dim (Merino)’) and whose sf/fantasy correspondent’s effect on the sales and livelihoods of sf and fantasy authors has been equated with file 770. The last comparison I feel unfair, because despite Damien’s tiny readership his attempts to harm my career and ability to make a living, he actually had some effect on my sales, with his hatred of my unread work improving sales for me. It is for this reason I find the news that the floundering ‘Grauniad’ (the Venezuela of mainstream print media, which is running out of other people’s money) seems to have dispensed with his services, so sad.

Sixty-five million years ago, a catastrophic impact forever changed the environmental landscape of Earth – and there was no way to see it coming.

This Earth-bound asteroid – or maybe several – changed the course of millions of years of evolution, altered the composition of our atmosphere – and the geology of Central America for good measure.

To prevent a similar event, we need to be prepared. Megan Bruck Syal, postdoctoral researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, works on the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (Aida) – which, for the first time, will test how effective a kinetic impact mission would be in altering the course of an Earth-bound asteroid.

“It’s not a matter of if an asteroid will impact again, but when,” says Bruck Syal. “Planetary defence began to be an issue when more and more near-Earth asteroids began to be discovered.”

She warns of close calls, like the Chelyabinsk meteorite – which in 2013 made international headlines when it left hundreds of people injured and damaged thousands of buildings in Russia. “It really captured the world’s attention because no one saw it coming. And it was pretty small yet it still did a lot of damage for its size.”

A brave Redditor named awayforthelads dumped what appears to be the entire plot of Season 7 onto the Freefolk subreddit. The subreddit has a long history of being the go-to place for Thrones leaks and last season was incredibly reliable at thoroughly spoiling almost every detail of Season 6.

As further proof of authenticity, awayforthelads has deleted his account, presumably to evade the wrath of HBO.

And actress Nathalie Emmanuel, who plays Daenerys Targaryen’s beautiful handmaiden Missandei, appears also to have confirmed the authenticity of the leak on Twitter:

The University of Florida wants students to know that counseling is available for students hoping to work past any offense taken from Halloween costumes.

“Some Halloween costumes reinforce stereotypes of particular races, genders, cultures, or religions. Regardless of intent, these costumes can perpetuate negative stereotypes, causing harm and offense to groups of people,” the school administration wrote in a blog post. “If you are troubled by an incident that does occur, please know that there are many resources available.”

“It’s tricky with computer graphics,” says Ray Villard, news director for the Space Telescope Science Institute. “You can make stuff in such extraordinary detail, people might think it’s real. People might think we’ve actually seen these features — canyons, all kinds of lakes and rivers.”

“The point of these illustrations is to create excitement, to grab the general public’s attention. But there is a danger that many people sometimes do mistake some of these illustrations for real photos,” agrees Luis Calçada, an artist with the European Southern Observatory’s education and public outreach department.

“Many, many astronomers actually do see this danger on this kind of illustration,” he says, “because it might create false images on people’s minds.”

Astronauts used the International Space Station’s robotic arm to grapple the Cygnus cargo spacecraft early Sunday morning, starting the process of bringing more than 5,100 pounds of supplies and research equipment aboard. The cargo’s experiments include one thing astronauts normally avoid: fire.

“The new experiments include studies on fire in space, the effect of lighting on sleep and daily rhythms, collection of health-related data, and a new way to measure neutrons,” NASA says.

[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]

Comment navigation

@John A. Arkansawyer: If it were my call, they’d be expelled so fast it’d make your head spin. I just don’t believe that requires the police to accomplish.

So, this group is seen on a night around/near Halloween (our campus have events with costumes, etc. the whole week around October 31, and our campus Homecoming is usually that week). Their activities need to be documented in order to expulsion–there are very specific procedures for expulsion (there isn’t one person on campus who gets to march up to them and say, it’s up to me, you’re expelled HEY PRESTO!), after all. So just how would that be documented?

One way would be to call the university police who are trained to deal with and talk to students (the idea that the police would be showing up at their doors, gun drawn, seems a bit….hyperbolic….to me).

My students who are in interracial relationships report being harassed on campus and in the small NE Texas town where we live. If they were confronted with such a group, do you really think they should just–what? Take a picture and walk away?

Remember that at this university, like all others in Texas, it’s now legal for open-carry on the campus.

@Clif: is there any issue on which I’m allowed to express a contrary opinion?

Free speech does not mean freedom from consequences. We have free speech too. You can express any contrary opinion your heart desires, and queer people, white women, and or people of color are free to express their opinion of your opinion. And that opinion might be that your opinion is fairly worthless and based on ignorance. And unlike members of those groups, the likelihood of being harassed on and offline for expressing an opinion is much smaller.

@robinreid: Calling the police would indeed be one way to go about it. I just think it’s the wrong way. It’s not a police issue. It’s an administrative issue in which there might be a need for police assistance. If the administrators feel the need for police backup, they can ask for it. But administrators should be able to talk to students, too.

This is the sort of thing where precise language is needed. That paragraph of execuspeak was sloppy, careless, and irresponsible. I really doubt that administrator at Tufts intended to imply they were going to send the police to investigate offensive costumes. But the statement as written says that they just might, and that’s wrong.

Your students who are being harassed? Harassment is a very different discussion from offense. They should do whatever they find necessary.

I might urge them not to go to the police, though, because in that corner of Texas, just like that corner of Arkansas, the police are not necessarily your friend if you are not white. I honestly don’t know what they should do in town because I don’t know that the cops there are reliably on their side.

John A Arkansawyer: I really doubt that administrator at Tufts intended to imply they were going to send the police to investigate offensive costumes. But the statement as written says that they just might, and that’s wrong.

Your attempt to reframe the discussion below to make it any costume that doesn’t violate an existing law naturally leads you in a circle back to this conclusion. At Tufts, they aren’t talking only about street legal costumes. Also, the dean’s statement — which is addressed to the Greek fraternities, by the way — says, “Furthermore, an increase of sexual assaults has occurred during this weekend in past years. This year, we want to break that trend.” This statement covers illegal activity as well.

Sorry, Mike. Not my intention; my bad, to have come across that way. I apologize.

What I would like to express is, this conversation follows a predictable and very tired pattern. I’m not sure what to do about it except to point out that answers to the question “what just purpose can this policy at Tufts possibly serve” have possibly already been given by people who… don’t get listened to as much as they should.

(Possibly in this very thread, but I haven’t caught up yet. I wanted to apologize first.)

The text that’s been quoted and requoted and highlighted in various ways says “students whose actions make …” – yes, actions, not costume. This seems to include for example anyone who think it’s OK to fondle other students in skimpy costumes, or someone taking the “trick” part into something not funny. And a lot of other things that are not really about their own costume.

The statement clearly covers a wide range of problematic behaviour, and I suppose it can be criticized for conflating them more than reasonable. But that does not make it fair to interpret it as saying that the mildest offences it describes will be met with the harshest responses it describes.

@John: It’s an administrative issue in which there might be a need for police assistance. If the administrators feel the need for police backup, they can ask for it.

The administrators are not likely to be out on the streets late at night (at least not in my experience).

We have a whole office (headed up by its own Dean) that handles complaints, and attempts to stave off complaints with regard to students and student groups (I had to work extensively with them the year my Gay/Straight Alliance student group wanted to host a drag show). That office works very closely with police.

But what you continue to ignore is the issue of students who are threatened by the actions of other students.

It’s a small town, and our university police have to meet much higher standards. I wouldn’t advise a students of color or white women to call the town police (I have heard too much about their harassment of Mexican immigrants). The university police department, headed for some years now by a woman who came in and straightened things out, is a different matter (they were amazing working with me when I was being harassed online by a disgruntled colleague).

The old university police department was an entirely different matter (I was the advisor for the animal rights group when I first came down here in the 1990s–and still remember how they treated the group when they exercised the right to protest–and followed all the university procedures).

The administrators are not likely to be out on the streets late at night (at least not in my experience).

Maybe they should be.

But what you say about campus police had kind of nibbled at my mind, too. I’m not much on campus police departments, for a whole lot of reasons. You just described a use case for them I can’t argue with: Protection of your students from surrounding indifferent (or worse) police forces. I actually wrote that, then didn’t post it.

It’s not often that someone changes my mind about something I’ve believed most of my life, but you might just have done it.

@Jayn: I see that he’s facing two to four years on a felony count for that. I’m going to say that’s a tad disproportionate.

I’ve done things at least that offensive while protesting the right wing. (I remember a memorable eighties encounter with the noted Sister Cindy when I said something so offensive and grotesque to her that it actually set her back on her heels, which is hard, ’cause she’s a pro.) If that standard had been applied to me, I’d still be in prison.

Prosecution is a different matter. Would you have had the demonstrators or bystanders try to get an administrator there instead of summoning the police? (And BTW, did you wave a noose or equivalent in people’s faces when you did something at least that offensive?)

Which, y’know, is exactly what I want my police to do. Dressing like the KKK, being gropey frat boys — maybe it can be handled administratively, but maybe it rises to Stuff You Want Cops For, like when the students in the KKK outfits start yelling threats at the black students, or when the frat boys start using their costume dildos to actually touch/smack girls with.

It might be good to have a sober non-involved trained observer there to take some notes to give to the administration, or haul the miscreants away to the drunk tank for the night before they do worse to others and themselves. It’s not like you’re gonna get the dean of students patrolling Party Row on Halloween night.

Only freeze peach is threatened here. Pearls need not be clutched unless that’s part of your costume.

John A Arkansawyer: I see that he’s facing two to four years on a felony count for that. I’m going to say that’s a tad disproportionate.

He committed a Class D felony. The law appears to have been created to deal with exactly this sort of thing. And I think it’s no bad thing that the Tennessee legislature decided that this sort of behavior would not be allowed.

He may well be a deterrent case to others who might be tempted to behave similarly — and our society defines laws for crimes and punishments: 1) to punish perpetrators, and 2) to deter would-be perpetrators.

@JJ: I generally take that sort of threat seriously and am okay with such prosecutions in principle, but come on. The story said he tied the nooses around the bananas.* That’s not a credible threat. That’s either absurd or stupid (probably stupid) but not violent.

That said, there’s undoubtedly stuff I haven’t read about it. He may have done something that is a credible threat. And it’s kind of hard to worry about this jackass’s well-being, since they’ll almost certainly plead him down to a misdemeanor and hit him with a fine, which will probably get paid for him.

Sigh. That makes me hope he did do something to get convicted over. He’s on the side of Evil and I don’t wish him well.

@Hampus Eckerman:

You’ve been openly racist against rightwingers? Why?

I didn’t say racist. I said offensive. Let’s see…there was trouble over the “Cut Off Reagan’s Arms” banner. People found that offensive. The Sister Cindy thing was a deliberately harsh mixture of blasphemy and obscenity. My “F—the Draft” t-shirt certainly caused some issues. That sort of thing.

I wasn’t offended, but I knew perfectly well it offended some people. Sometimes that was the point. As a favorite song says, “I’d like to say I’m sorry, but I lived to tell about it, and do a whole bunch more crazy stupid shit.” In concert, there’s always a “But I ain’t sorry”. I ain’t neither.

John A Arkansawyer: I generally take that sort of threat seriously and am okay with such prosecutions in principle, but come on. The story said he tied the nooses around the bananas.* That’s not a credible threat. That’s either absurd or stupid (probably stupid) but not violent.

But it could certainly be inciteful to violence if other hostile people were present — I imagine that we’ve all seen examples where when one person did something stupid or awful, and it emboldened other people to join in and resulted in mob violence.

I liken it to the posting by anti-abortion groups of the names, addresses, and photos of doctors who perform terminations. Technically, it’s legal — but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it an illegal threat in 2002. I see what this guy did as being inciteful in the same way.

Re your “F**k the Draft” shirt, your comment reminded me of a US Supreme Court case, Cohen v. California, in which the majority opinion held that to be “protected speech”. Not really apropos of the discussion at hand, but I thought it was interesting.

“@JJ: I generally take that sort of threat seriously and am okay with such prosecutions in principle, but come on. The story said he tied the nooses around the bananas.* That’s not a credible threat. That’s either absurd or stupid (probably stupid) but not violent.”

Coming to a Black Lives Matter protest, using symbolism of monkeys and nooses?? I would absolutely call that intimidation. And I would be very surprised if demonstrators didn’t feel intimidated.

Not by what the person would do at that exact monent. But by the implied threat to all blacks who dares to protest.

Coming to a Black Lives Matter protest, using symbolism of monkeys and nooses?? I would absolutely call that intimidation. And I would be very surprised if demonstrators didn’t feel intimidated.

Not by what the person would do at that exact monent. But by the implied threat to all blacks who dares to protest.

Exactly. At this point it doesn’t matter what the guy in the gorilla mask is tying a noose around. It’s a noose. It is a freighted symbol in the discourse surrounding racism in the U.S. Racists use it advisedly and people of color understand it exactly as it is meant.

White people aren’t going to necessarily feel threatened by it. They’re not meant to. It is a handy weapon of racist intimidation precisely because white people can be counted upon to say, “Oh, come on, that’s hardly a credible threat! You called the police over that? Grow up!” while black people can be counted upon to remember which family members of theirs wound up as strange fruit hanging from the trees–or could wind up being the next person killed by a cop while the public largely shrugs and says, “Well, he was no angel, after all.”

I’m thinking back to a very vigorous anti-Klan demonstration I participated in decades back, where one of the marching chants was “Whoops! Up! Side your head! Whoops upside your head!” We certainly intended to intimidate those scumbags while they exercised their civil rights. It wasn’t a terribly credible threat, given the amount of police between us and them, and especially given that the police force there was known to be racist and would have been on their side, but if push had come to shove, I wasn’t planning on curling up in a fetal position.

@Bonnie McDaniel: “Upside your head” is very much a threat to hit someone in the head. There were several hundred of us and we outnumbered the Klan at least ten to one. If the police had magically disappeared, there’s a good possibility very few of the Klansmen would have walked away.

A few weeks later, Reagan kicked off his campaign in Neshoba, Mississippi.

I’m kind of surprised no one was. There are usually lots of arrests on both sides when nazis and racists demonstrate in Sweden. I am very happy with this. Also, hate speech should of course be criminalized. US has a long way to go there.

Re the noose not being a credible threat because the dude tied it round a banana and there weren’t enough people on his side to make it possible for him to put it to other use after untying it – if I were approached by a masked dude in a Nazi uniform waving a can marked ‘Zyklon B’ in my face, I would consider it a threat even if the can were clearly a Pringles can relabeled with magic marker. The man is using a clearly understood symbol alluding to a threat of murder and ONLY murder, just like gorilla guy and the noose, and just UNLIKE your threat to swat someone upside the head. (I swatted lots of heads in grade school, never killed or even injured anyone.) Your brushing aside the distinction is cavalier.

And yes, if I saw such a man, I would want the police to deal with him. Anyone willing to traffic in such threats is potentially dangerous, not just offensive.

@Jayn and others: You all may be right about this. I’m getting a little sick to my stomach at defending the right to this act. (The act itself is indefensible.)

A few years ago, I thought the US way of handling hate speech was demonstrably better than the European one, due to the open presence of a large, racist, hard-right wing there but not here. Now that we have one of our own here in America again, the ground drops out from under that argument.

I will keep looking at speech restrictions and asking, “How can this be used for Evil?”

By the way, I mentioned in another thread the wonderful novel Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock. It, too, has a gorilla-suited protestor with a banana in it. That one is working the crowd outside the Arkansas Supreme Court during our most recent evolution trial. It’s a funny bit leading to a most excellent confrontation.

I will keep looking at speech restrictions and asking, “How can this be used for Evil?”

I’m sure you would have a much shorter list by asking “how can this not be used for evil.”

I have a very serious problem with people who are utterly confident that they are in the right to silence the speech of others. Especially when they have the power of their government to back them up. Yes, there are “obvious” cases such as KKK and neo-Nazi activities, but once you make laws banning their speech, you have allowed the camel’s nose into your tent. “Hate speech” and “hate crimes” and “cultural appropriation” opposition starts out with the big issues, but then works it’s way down to smaller and smaller and smaller ones. Agressions are succeeded by microagressions, which will surely be succeeded by nanoagressions.

For instance, I have owned and worn ponchos in winter for I’d say a good 20 years now. I am not Mexican. Some nutbags are already calling any non-Mexican wearing a sombrero “cultural appropriation.” How long until I become a hate criminal for wearing my ponchos?

When governments are allowed to criminalize speech, you get things like this:

And before some of you jump in and say that your demands for censorship are different than their demands for censorship, I’ll say two things–1.) the difference is in degree, not kind, and 2.) the other side also claims obvious moral authority for their censorship.

Regarding hate speech laws, the big fight in Sweden has not been to forbid blasphemy. Was never on the map. It has been to stop hate speech when people say it should be part of their religious freedom to hate gays.

@Darren Garrison: Most of those countries don’t really need speech restrictions to be unfree.

The German case? Well, one of those slogans on his car was “Kill Pope Francis”, a detail in the link from that story you linked to. I personally think that’s clearly hyperbole and not a credible threat, and I wouldn’t punish it. I also think a reasonable person might disagree.

These are hard questions for me. I envy those of you for whom they are easy.

@John A Arkansawyer: I see that he’s facing two to four years on a felony count for that. I’m going to say that’s a tad disproportionate.

@JJ He committed a Class D felony. The law appears to have been created to deal with exactly this sort of thing.

Without, in any way, defending what he did . . . .

First of all, he’s been accused of committing a Class D Felony. Whether or not he committed one is something for a court to decide.

Second, look at the statute. A necessary element is to “Injure, or threaten to injure, or to coerce . . . “, or to damage personal or real property, or to wear a mask with the intent of (injuring, coercing, damaging). It’s difficult to see how simply wearing a costume and holding a rope and bananas fulfills any of those.

But it could certainly be inciteful to violence if other hostile people were present

A threat has to be a “true threat” to get over 1st amendment issues. Just because a hostile person doesn’t like it, and may get spun up enough to fight, isn’t sufficient.

It is an argument for stopping hate speech and hatemongers before it is too late.

No. In context, it is an argument that if we stand by and allow authorities to go after people who we all agree are saying bad things, then when they want to come after us for what we say, regardless of whether or not it is bad (and to us, it isn’t bad), there will be no one left to stand with us.

I find it weird that if I put up posters in the neighbourhood stating that my neighbour Bob Smith is a (something something), I can be sued for defamation – but if I put up posters in the neighbourhood stating that everyone of group X are (something something), that should be “protected speech” and there’s no way the law can be used to make me stop putting up those posters. (Even if my neighbour Bob Smith happens to be an obvious and prominent member of group X.)

I also find it weird that if I organize a rally where I urge the crowd to lynch people of group X, and the crowd take me up on it and lynches an X passing by, I am likely to be held responsible for that. But if I soften my words just a little, and the crowd waits until some hours later before they lynch any Xs, what I said at the rally is protected speech and I can’t be held responsible for the lynchings.

Freedom of speech, like other freedoms, can be judged by two very different criterias: As the absence of government restriction, and as the presence of meaningful options and a real ability to choose. An absence of government restriction does not automatically give everyone a real and meaningful ability to make their own choices. Instead, some level of government interference can increase the freedom to act for the average citizen.

I think it is dangerously naive to see free speech only in terms of the freedom to say outrageous things without government interference. It is also important to see free speech as our success in fostering a positive public discourse, where there is a meaningful exchange of ideas, and where as many people as possible see participation as an actual possibility. And I think that can be achieved best with some level of restriction on threats and harassment.

“No. In context, it is an argument that if we stand by and allow authorities to go after people who we all agree are saying bad things, then when they want to come after us for what we say, regardless of whether or not it is bad (and to us, it isn’t bad), there will be no one left to stand with us.”

I have no idea how people can cone to such weird conclusions regarding Niemöllers poem. Niemöller was one of them who welcomed Hitlers ascend to powet and the poem is an admission of guilt that he did nothing in the beginning before the nazis came to power. The point is that the hatemongers should be stopped before they become the authorities.

@Darren Garrison
Regarding the blasphemy case here in Germany, yes, we still have blasphemy laws (which I’m opposed to) and occasionally someone gets sued, usually for insulting the Catholic church. Very few of those cases come to anything. Regarding this particular case, the man drove around Münster, a heavily Catholic city (on the tower of the main church, there still are cages that were used to display executed Anabaptist leaders 500 years ago), with very rude anti-religious slogans on his car, one of which, as John A. Arkansawyer said, threatened to kill Pope Francis. And death threats are a step up from anti-religious slogans.

Regarding nooses, at a march of the racist and xenophobic Pegida movement, a protester carried around a small gallows of two nooses reserved for Chancellor Angela Merkel and Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel. This was viewed as incitement to hatred and a death threat and the protester was prosecuted. Gabriel had also been threatened with a cardboard guillotine at a leftist anti-TTIP protest earlier, which also led to an investigation. No idea of the outcome, though I recall they had problems identifying the culprits in both cases.

Commenters here, and many online reports, keep referring to “nooses”. None of the video or photos that I’ve seen show the idiot holding a noose. The police report doesn’t mention a noose. Did he tie the rope into a noose?

And for what it’s worth, I think the calm reaction of the BLM protesters is a far more effective rebuke than criminal charges.